Full speed and free

My situation right now is quite strange for me. The project I am involved in at work is really running full speed ahead - with my largest Scrum-team so far, 9 people - and at the same time I have some days a week off.

This has to do with a great Swedish invention called parenthood leave (my translation). When you think about it, it’s actually quite amazing - I get a lot of days from the government to be with my child. Sweden is fantastic.

The hard part for me is to switch on and off since I am not a work a day a week (or so) I still have my mind on ODP.NET, WCF and Aspects. But hey - I might learn.

Today me and Abbe have been on a really long walk around some beautiful archipelago right in the middle of Stockholm. That was great!...

Read More

VasaBand - full speed ahead

The band I am playing in - the Vasa band - is right now in a great form, great spirit and on full speed ahead;

  • Last Sunday we did a concert in Sundbyberg - first for the season. It went very well and was good received.
  • Our website - www.vasaband.se (or www.vasaband.com) - is soon to be launched. It looks great I think. Great work Samuel!
  • We are in the last preparations for our new CD - Priority
  • On Wednesday the 8 October 19.30 there will be a release party on Centrumkåren, [Drottningatan 66](http://www.hitta.se/LargeMap.aspx?var=Drottningatan+66+stockholm)
  • Two days later we will be heading out on a tour to promote the CD. The tour will take us to Lidköping, Göteborg and Jönköping.
  • The season will end with a Christmas concert.

Lot’s of stuff but I love every minute of it. I...

Read More

New layout

It’s been a while since I’ve updated the layout of the blog - but now it’s been done!  

The theme is a bit more autumn than the previous one - may not kling to this one for as long.

Aha - my tag cloud have disappeared - I’ll get it back for you , sorry me.

[UPDATED]

Tag Cloud is back - thanks again for an excellent description. Have also added my analytics tags which always disappear when you do an update…

Read More

I was first!

Tonight a new TV-shop is introduced in Sweden, Hål i Väggen. It’s a total rip-off from a really wacky Japanese TV-show.

Just to set the record straight - I discovered it first! Here is the proof - written Wednesday, July 11, 2007.

So TV6 - send the money to me. I accept checks. ;)

**[UPDATED] **Hehe - spoke to soon! The program wasn’t aired until today, Sunday. Sorry about that - I was still first though…

Read More

Using LINQ for the first time, for real

The LINQ project is one of those techniques that first makes you cheer, then think about how you’ll ever will use it in real life and then not think about it.

Also it seems to be a lot of confusion about what LINQ really is. LINQ is a number of constructs in the .NET framework to do queries over database, XML or object. This post may clarify things a bit.

I ran into a situation where my function received a parameter, lista, that was Generic list of MyObject. Since I was planning on sending associative arrays to Oracle I needed each property in MyObject in an own array.

LINQ to the fore! A LINQ-query could actually help us to produce the arrays we need. Here is my code:

public sub CallStoredProc(byval lista as List(Of...
      
Read More

How to pass and receive associative arrays with ODP.NET

“How to pass and receive associative arrays with ODP.NET” - that question is sure to have to annoyed a lot of programmers. We have really pulled our hair over this problem and when you search for it on the net there is not very much helpful to be found.

We are using a feature of the ODP.NET that allows you to send arrays of parameters to and from stored procedures in Oracle. This is called associative arrays and is described in great detail in this article.

BUT… of course there is a but. This article doesn’t describe how to receive arrays back from a stored procedure. This is described here.

The trick (and confusing part) is that the size of the output array needs to be specified a priori (on beforehand) even for output parameters. A bit strange but it works.

Read More

Sleepless in Stockholm

Since I took a way too long nap together with Abbe earlier this evening, I am now paying the price and can’t sleep. This happens about once every fifth year or so, so why not take the opportunity to do something useful.

So now that I’ve done that (a PowerPoint presentation for work that never seems to top my priority and sending emails surrounding Christmas(!) concerts), I thought I’d upload some new pictures of Abbe.

Good night reader… wherever you are.

Read More

More on Enterprise Library (EntLib), ODP.NET and type mapping

The last time I wrote about this I was a bit too fast to get all the intricate details down. One of those details blew up in my face today.

The main reason for why it took me the better part of the afternoon to sort out had to do with some really confusing name-setting. Here is was confused me;

  • the namespace System.Data.Oracle Microsoft has provided a implementation of a Oracle client provider. Keyword: Microsoft -this implementation doesn’t contain all the functionality in Oracle databases.
  • cause of that Oracle has given us the Oracle.DataAccess.Client or ODP.NET for short. In this you’ll have all the things you’ll need.

Both of these inherits from the generic DbCommand (and uses the same name for almost everything) and can hence be converted into DbCommand but not into each other (of course - but this took me about 1,5...

Read More

Converting Class library project to MS Test project

We have encountered a problem when renaming and restructuring Visual Studio projects. (There are numerous problems with that but here is one that really cause us to ponder for a while.) We create a standard Class Library project and moved some unit test files into it. Of course we should have create a test project instead but now we didn’t - ok…

The problem was that the unit tests didn’t show up in the test view. The solution was to add the following line into the project file (ripped from a working test project) <projecttypeguids>{3AC096D0-A1C2-E12C-1390-A8335801FDAB};{F184B08F-C81C-45F6-A57F-5ABD9991F28F}</projecttypeguids>

The GUID’s are probably just my guids but the important stuff is that you’ll need to add the projecttypeguids for your project in order to make it a test project.

[UPDATED] Oh yeah - you’ll need to unload the projectfile and edit it manually in a texteditor. I wrote this in an hurry and missed...

Read More

Retreat - creative silience

I am back from a very different weekend indeed. I was given the opportunity to take part in a retreat organised by our corps (congregation). That meant that we were 15 people going away to far-off place and were silent for the main part of the weekend.

Yes - I understand that the ones who know me have a very hard time to see me being silent for such a long time, but it all went very well.

Also the power and restfulness in being silent was so great. There are so many experiences that will stay with me for a long, long time; like eating together with 15 people in total silence - very different, or walking together with two close friends, without saying anything - it made me feel powerful.

Finally - when you are left “alone” with such much time on your hands it was very interesting...

Read More